Ages 14 and up. First time novelist Andrew Auseon brings a fresh voice to this surrealistic comedy that will have teens snickering with recognition despite its deliberate grotesqueries.

Arty, 15, is 4 foot 2. His twin brother Kurt is 6 foot 3. They hate each other with the instant antagonism of a Rottweiler and an alley cat, Arty spewing insults and taunts, and Kurt responding with the massive force of his gorilla hulk. Long ago, when they were ten, they were the same size. Then Arty developed Growth Hormone Deficiency Syndrome, their father stole the family Pontiac and held up a Rite Aid for a case of beer, and their beloved grampa died suddenly in the supermarket. The brothers' hostility has grown ever since, and it plays out against the black comedy background of Millard Fillmore High School, where the school mascot, a statue of a boxing turtle named Millie, has just been stolen, and a bizarre underground of grungy punks and outcasts hang out in the downstairs tunnel world of the Art Wing.

Arty endures the indignities of his size (a booster seat at school, sneakers from his eight-year-old cousin) but when Kurt gets to be more than he can bear, he accepts an offer of manipulated revenge from the rebel-without-a-cause leader of the underground, the diabolical but strangely sympathetic Kerouac. His organization sets in motion a complicated plan to sabotage Kurt's love life and blame him for Millie's theft. In a darkly comic night of pursuit through rain and mud, flashing police lights, and abandoned warehouses the two brothers finally realize the source of their rage and begin to make mutual cause against their gritty world. --Patty Campbell

Genre: General Fiction (Young Adult)